# Wasserstein Distance-based Expansion of Low-Density Latent Regions for Unknown Class Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05594 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05594/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [Supervised Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11362/) (2020)
- [DINO: DETR with Improved DeNoising Anchor Boxes for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03605/) (2022)
- [Large-Scale Long-Tailed Recognition in an Open World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05160/) (2019)
- [Open-Vocabulary Object Detection Using Captions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10678/) (2020)
- [Simple and Principled Uncertainty Estimation with Deterministic Deep Learning via Distance Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10108/) (2020)
- [Towards Open World Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02603/) (2021)
- [On Wasserstein Two Sample Testing and Related Families of Nonparametric Tests](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.02237/) (2015)
- [Learning Placeholders for Open-Set Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15086/) (2021)
- [Dropout Sampling for Robust Object Detection in Open-Set Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.06677/) (2017)
- [Towards Open-Set Object Detection and Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05604/) (2022)
- [Expanding Low-Density Latent Regions for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14911/) (2022)
- [Uncertainty for Identifying Open-Set Errors in Visual Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.01328/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper addresses the significant challenge in open-set object detection (OSOD): the tendency of state-of-the-art detectors to erroneously classify unknown objects as known categories with high confidence. We present a novel approach that effectively identifies unknown objects by distinguishing between high and low-density regions in latent space. Our method builds upon the Open-Det (OD) framework, introducing two new elements to the loss function. These elements enhance the known embedding space's clustering and expand the unknown space's low-density regions. The first addition is the Class Wasserstein Anchor (CWA), a new function that refines the classification boundaries. The second is a spectral normalisation step, improving the robustness of the model. Together, these augmentations to the existing Contrastive Feature Learner (CFL) and Unknown Probability Learner (UPL) loss functions significantly improve OSOD performance. Our proposed OpenDet-CWA (OD-CWA) method demonstrates: a) a reduction in open-set errors by approximately 17%-22%, b) an enhancement in novelty detection capability by 1.5%-16%, and c) a decrease in the wilderness index by 2%-20% across various open-set scenarios. These results represent a substantial advancement in the field, showcasing the potential of our approach in managing the complexities of open-set object detection.